My Knees Were Jumping Remembering the Kindertransport (1995)

December 2, 1998

FILM REVIEW; Children Were Saved, but So Much Was Lost

By JANET MASLIN

Published: December 2, 1998

Melissa Hacker's documentary, ''My Knees Were Jumping: Remembering the Kindertransports,'' is about the Jewish children who were saved by emigrating to Britain (from Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia) 60 years ago. Since Ms. Hacker is the daughter of one such emigre -- the costume designer Ruth Morley, an Academy Award nominee for ''The Miracle Worker'' -- she approaches her poignant subject matter in a particularly earnest, intimate way.

In this gentle documentary, which opens today at the Anthology Film Archives and was previously shown at the Sundance Film Festival, Ms. Hacker's mother and others who shared the young refugees' experience speak at length about its impact. And they delve into their memories, sometimes in the context of support groups or family gatherings. If the film is narrow in range, it's also heartfelt in its search for the lasting significance of what these children and their parents went through.

''I have a good life now,'' says one elderly woman. ''I have a good husband. But I have a nightmare that I live with for the rest of my life.''

The ex-refugees, mostly women, talk about their growing apprehensions before leaving home, and about what one calls ''a sense of the malice all around us.'' One aged interviewee can still remember the anti-Semitic taunts of her Aryan schoolmates. From a child's-eye point of view, the speakers recall the destruction wreaked on Kristallnacht and experiences like going to school and finding it closed. The speakers also remember how their parents made the decision, as wrenching as Sophie's choice, to part with their children, possibly forever, on the eve of war. Though old newsreels show the children embarking for England without too much obvious dismay, and with brave displays of composure from the adults, 90 percent of these young travelers never saw their parents again.

Remembering England, in a film narrated by Joanne Woodward, the speakers describe how the luckiest among them found foster homes (Ms. Morley stayed in six of them in two years), while older children had a more difficult time attracting help. (An English newsreel from those days depicts the children and mentions ''the Jewish refugee influx, which is providing the world with such a ticklish problem.'') And they read, heartbreakingly at times, from journals and letters describing that period. One absent father wrote of trying to imagine his daughter as she grew up far away, in what proved to be the last letter she ever received from him. ''The way I plead for it, it must make a stone weep,'' Ms. Morley says, looking over her own written pleas to see her parents again.

Ms. Morley dominates this affecting film as a strong, gracious presence long before the viewer has any idea that ''My Knees Were Jumping'' is dedicated to her memory. Now her story, and those of others who suffered the same terrible upheaval, has been preserved for the world to see.

MY KNEES WERE JUMPING
Remembering the Kindertransports

Produced, directed and edited by Melissa Hacker; directors of photography, John Foster, Kevin Keating, Jill Johnson and Eric Schmidt; music by Joel Goodman; released by Anthology Film Archives and the National Center for Jewish Film. At the Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue at Second Street, East Village. Running time: 76 minutes. This film is not rated.